where have our hobbies gone?

Good morning and welcome to a Top Shelf Thursday! On Tuesday of this week I mentioned the ease of using charge cards and debit cards – digital money. In fact, paying with coins and paper money has become an inconvenience to most of us. With this steady decline in money use, so we also have a steady decline in coin collecting. If you’ve never been a collector of coins, thimbles, McDonald’s glasses, sports cards, stamps, Coca-Cola memorabilia, milk bottles, or millions of other fascinating collectible items, today’s blog may well be foreign to you. Those of us who’ve experienced this excitement and passion probably already have an idea of where this is going. So let’s refill our cups and pull up a chair. The Guess Who greets me this morning with their 1969 hit, These Eyes.

Gold opened the week at $1,223.20 and is currently down $9.70 at $1,213.50.

Silver opened the week at $15.47 and is currently down $0.11 at $15.36.

Platinum opened the week at $828 and is currently down $14 at $814.

Palladium opened the week at $919 and is currently down $3 at $906.

I think the catchphrase of “Move along, nothing to see here” fits these Dog Days of Summer.

So is anybody asking where I’m going with this? To me, it’s simply a more systemic issue affecting our entire society. Of course you know I am passionate about coins. Coin collecting is my hobby. What is your hobby? Or your kids? Or grandkids? Dennis Prager wrote an essay for the Daily Signal about hobbies and how at least one entire generation has been robbed of this passion, joy, and creativity. He shares how Dan Scotti, a writer for the website Elite Daily concluded:

“The fact that hobbies may be a thing of the past is an eerie thought. I can’t honestly say that I see hobbies such as “carpentry” making a comeback at any time in the near future. … As sad as it may seem to older generations, we genuinely have an interest in Instagram, Twitter, and other products of the digital age.”

Prager goes on to say, “There is a world of difference between being active and being passive, between creating something and watching something, between doing something and being entertained.”

We attempt to create a passion for studying for good grades in our children and mistakenly call it a “passion for learning,” and the moment they’re done with studies, they plant themselves down in front of their screens – TV, computer, tablet, or smartphone.

Prager concludes his essay with, “Technology, excessive homework, and the demise of God, religion, and love of country—these have all left a generation bereft of passions beyond amusement and getting good grades.”

Click here for Dennis Prager’s article in the Daily Signal…and here to read Dan Scotti’s essay “Why Don’t Millennials Have Hobbies Anymore?” in the Elite Daily.

Because I believe in getting your feet wet before jumping in over your head, an easy and relatively inexpensive way to introduce a child into coin collecting is to purchase a Jefferson Nickel Coin Album for as little as $5 or as much as $25. The nice thing about Jefferson Nickels is that there are no rare coins in this series and all of them can still be found in rolls obtained at your local bank. Then, if the child has interest in this hobby, you can expand into other series.

Well, I’ll let that be it for today. Go out there and make a difference! See ya later!

*Disclaimer: Precious Metal Musings™ is written for entertainment and news purposes only and should not be used in making purchases and/or sales of precious metals.